Linko! LVI

* There've been a TON of fun interviews showing up online this week to celebrate the finale of Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris' WildStorm series Ex Machina (which I still haven't read because I'm lame and behind). I'll start by pointing out CBR's own two-part interview with BKV conducted by novelist and comics writer Brad Meltzer: PART 1, PART 2. Props to CBR staffer Jeffrey Renaud for making that one happen. On the other side of the street, the esteemed Zack Smith has a great series of his own up at Newsarama with the entire series creative team: PART 1, PART 2, PART 3. Matt Adler also has a nice overview chat with BKV up at iFanboy right now.

And if you haven't seen it yet, James Simes' "Ex Machina: Deconstructing The Machine" process site with Tony Harris is all kinds of radical. Explained here. Experienced here.

* The other real piece of interview fireworks to check out this week is the latest installment of cartoonist Austin English's "20 Questions With Cartoonists" blog with Brandon Graham. There's a difference in mindset when an artist speaks with another artist as opposed to a member of the press. I'm not even sure its a conscious thing, but questions on process, theory and other "higher order concerns" of comics making come out so strong in interviews like English's, and with a subject like Graham, that's a great thing to watch. (Via)

* Kai-Ming Cha's PW Comics Week interview with AX editor Michael Wilson (one of a half dozen or so that I'm sure have gotten out there since San Diego) is a really nice primer on gekiga manga, which it looks like we'll be seeing a lot more of in the months ahead, amongst other things.

* I had a lot of links set aside last week that I didn't get to include, so here we go...

I was actually on the phone with Mark Millar when this NY Times story about a labor dispute involving the workers at a nuclear plant in Metropolis, IL, and when I told him about it, Mark exclaimed, "Holy shit! This is it! This is when he's going to come and save us all for real!"

* Remember when I linked to that story about Golden Age artist Lily Renée Phillips two weeks back? Of course you do! Well, some creative Googling led me to a sample story of Phillips' "Werewolf Hunter" series from Fiction House over on the great Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine.

* Fact: lists of things are very popular online. Additional Fact: very rarely do you find a list you agree with 100% or even like 30%. Still, I enjoyed reading this List of 25 Famous Movie Geeks, all in all. While I'm no big proponent of the idea that there's some shared geek culture, I can honestly say that as a kid I identified with a lot of the characters in the article, and it was nice to see them compiled in one place. (Related: this List of Music Geeks was less fun but not all bad).

* My pal (and former DC Comics editor) Michael Wright is constantly sharing fun links on Facebook since he got a gig as editor of Gibson Guitar's website, but I hadn't been compelled to share one until this interview with Ben Kweller. New album in 2010! SCORE!

* There's no way this story is as awesome as the images its headline conjures in my mind, but it's still pretty awesome.